Friends, Flowers, and a Fieldtrip

Hi All:

Wow, it is really hard to believe that it has been 6 weeks since we’ve updated anything here. Sorry to our regular guests here on the blog…life seems to have gotten in the way of attending to our communications with the world.

A lot has been going on, and we have been really busy. Part of that busy state has been socializing with some of the staff and faculty of the University. Our friend Oscar’s birthday (look for the guy that looks like Eugene Levy) was in the beginning of February, and it coincided with the arrival of our friend Carlos’ arrival to teach a course on Indigenous peoples for UPAZ. Of course that necessitated a party, and we obliged. Below you’ll see a photo depicting the group. It was a fun night! J We have been lucky to get to know all these good folks.

Amy has been enjoying her ability to be mobile (as her post above suggests), and now has been visiting the pool three days a week. I am jealous of her ability to go and swim during the mornings. It has just been really hot and dry over the last few months.

One of the most beautiful things that happened in the recent past has been a massive wave of flowering that occurred here in Ciudad Colon during the heart of the dry season. Amy and I are still learning about the seasons here, and it has been fun to discover what happens when. I had asked many taxi drivers, locals, and staff from UPAZ about when the coffee flowered, but no one gave us a solid answer. I suppose it is just one of those things that just happen, like robins coming back in the Spring, that you just start to take for granted when you’ve lived some place for your entire life. The answer to my question came during the second week of February after a rare rain…suddenly little white buds starting breaking through on the coffee plants. The flowers grew during the end of the week, and Amy and took advantage of a Saturday morning to stroll up to campus and check out the cafetales (coffee farms) in flower. I should also mention that the coffee wasn’t the only thing flowering; the trees flower here in the dry season as well. One of the most beautiful is the wonderful Corteza Amarilla, which blossoms with an incredible yellow flower. So, we walked up in the heat of the morning, but it was so worth it to see, smell, and hear the coffee in flower. The smell was sweet and delicious; I wanted to bottle it for a perfume. The sound you ask? The sound was produced by the millions of bees and other bugs taking advantage of the pollen bonanza. Anyway, it was a great walk, a beautiful way to enjoy the local environs.

A week later, Amy and I were invited to join our friend Carlos on his course’s field trip to the Bri-Bri nation’s Indigenous Reserve in the Talamanca mountains in the southeastern section of the country (down near the Panamanian border, and just inland from the Caribbean coast). Carlos was an insructor here at UPAZ in the Environmental Security and Peace program, which is the other program in our department. The really cool thing about this group is its international nature, from Canada to Nigeria is covered with this bunch! The trip’s intention was to bring a field component to the course so that the students could engage with a case of Indigenous issues here in Costa Rica. Many Costa Ricans will tell you that there are no Indigenous people here, but this is far from true. In fact, just near our house there is another reserve called Quitirisi. Like indigenous people all around the world, the Bri-Bri have suffered from discrimination and outright deprivation at times. However, also like indigenous people around the world, they have been resilient and have found ways to reinvent themselves in the face of outside influence and domination.

So, we traveled to an albergue (a lodge) out in the Bri-Bri reserve that was about as “middle of nowhere” as could be possible. The next morning we got up and headed over to a subsection of the Bri-Bri called Kekoldi. There, we were able to take a tour with a subgroup of the tribe that has developed an ecotourism tour, which highlights their iguana conservation farm and their biological research station. The first project helps to protect the iguana from the danger of extinction by restocking the surrounding woods with iguanas. The local people rely upon iguana meat for protein at times, and this project helps to reduce the threat that the iguana faces from this pressure. It isn’t a very “radical” project, but it is a realistic one that is trying to maintain both tradition and an animal species. The research station we hiked into, through old cacao (cocoa) plantations that had been closed due to a blight that had come through in the 1980s. Along the way, our guide showed us numerous plants and fruits that the Bri Bri use for food, shelter, and medicines. An example is the Jicaro fruit/gourd that you will see below. It is emptied, dried, and carved for use as storage of water and other items. When we got to the top, they had a nice lodge built to support visits from groups like ours (i.e. prepare a nice lunch of traditional root vegetables and chicken). They also had an observation tower, which was built specifically for to observe the migration of raptors on their way down and back from the Northern hemisphere. They said that they sometimes spot up to 250,000 birds pass in a day. I couldn’t stop thinking about how Marty and Linda would have dug it. It was a good hike and chat, fort those who might want to learn more go here: http://www.kekoldi.org/

That afternoon we ended up down by the beach, and so we took advantage of the opportunity for the students to enjoy a little recreation time. We spent one more night at the albergue, and then headed back to Ciudad Colon.

All in all, it was a good trip, and we owe many thanks to Carlos for inviting us along. So, I’ll leave you with that for now.

Another post will follow this one soon!

Abrazos y besos,

David y Amy


A Picture of the Gang celebrating!


A Cafetal in bloom.


Corteza Amarilla (Yellow Bark) tree.


Coffee Flowers Up-Close


The Iguana Farm in Kekoldi


Iguanas...


Jicaro fruit/gourd


Cacao...it's really yummy as a fruit too!


Listening to a really great talk.


View from the bird tower.


The Environmental Security and Peace group.